RC Liebherr Excavator Provides Demo with Shears and Breaker

RC Liebherr Excavator Provides Demo with Shears and Breaker

If you’re considering a new purchase for your heavy equipment fleet, you want to know what that machine can do. Understanding that need to see for yourself, Liebherr created a series of photos showing their 960 excavator using shears and a breaker. But wait – is that a giant whose feet you see in the background?

Nope. The person looks gigantic because the Liebherr excavator is just a model. But apart from its diminutive size, that excavator is the real thing.

Several construction equipment manufacturers now use scaled-down, radio-controlled models to demonstrate actual jobsite features and capabilities. In our Liebherr example, the company built a pint-sized RC mini 960 excavator and used it to demolish an equally small (but to scale) concrete swimming pool using a breaker and shears.

It makes sense. Beauty shots – those gorgeous professional photos from the manufacturer that show equipment in posed positions — have a certain amount of sex appeal. But you need more than another pretty face to build your construction or similar business. You need machines that work hard and work efficiently, in the kind of conditions your projects present. Sure, you can read the specs and the write-ups, but what you really want is to see that new machine running through its paces.

And that’s where models come in

Kids have been playing with model construction equipment for decades. With the advent of far more sophisticated models, especially the addition of remote radio control, adults have gotten in on the action, too. Who doesn’t love operating your own fleet of mini-equipment, whether by hand or with a joy stick? But it’s no longer all about playing in the dirt.

Manufacturers are using their models to create slide shows and even videos. And they’re putting on live demos at trade shows (where the midget fleets usually steal the show).

Meanwhile, construction equipment models have taken on a larger life of their own, filling a niche in the collectors’ marketplace. Whereas you may have had a few tiny trucks, graders, or cranes on your desk or a shelf in your office, you can now collect those far-more-fun RC models. They’re bigger than shelf-size, just right to take on location to dig a trench, move some earth, or – yes – tear down a dollhouse size structure.

Collecting RC model construction equipment is so hot right now, even people not otherwise connected to the industry have joined the party. Will you be next? Fun as collecting might be, Liebherr and other OEMs are hoping you’ll consider their full-size machines, too.